Panic in Detroit!

Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex, a very good book that i usually read only during yom-kippur (because you need a lot of time and concentration) which is in a part, a saga of an immigrant greek family in Detroit with many references to historic events of the city. Madonna, also native of Detroit, just finished her worldwide tour, the crisis of the car industry and so on...
so, Detroit: at the beginning of the 20th Century, the city of Detroit developed rapidly thanks to the automobile industry, a home to the 'Big Three' companies, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. until the 50’s, its population rose to almost 2 million people and Detroit was the 4th most important city in the US. segregation and de-industrialization caused violent inter-racial riots in the late 60's (some say that the song of Bowie 'Panic in Detroit' is based on Iggy Pops's descriptions of revolutionaries he had known at that time). the following white middle-class exodus from the city together with the oil crises of 1973 (yom kippur war), that impacted the American auto industry, marked the beginning of the decline. firms and factories began to close or move to lower-wage states. slowly, but inexorably downtown high-rise buildings, theaters and historic monuments emptied. Since the 50’s, “Motor City” lost more than half of its population. source: alex|3d